Introducing...

Oh yes, we've taken the plunge and bought a real machine. We took our motorcycle safety course in January and had been mulling over our options since. We'd always talked about getting a Vespa (B says it's been a dream for many years for him), but partly never seriously thought we would. It was such a big deal. And it is oh so stylish. We love our little mopeds, but if we went anywhere together, we had to bring both of them -- they are too small, both legally and practically, for two.

So we stopped into the shop that sells the fancy scooters (also the big Harley showroom) and they had just gotten this 2008 in with only 1,600 miles and we simply couldn't resist.

We've been absolutely loving riding places together. We still just drive it locally, not going outside of where we would ride the mopeds, but it's just so nice to go together. We've even "carpooled" to work a few times. Almost makes going to work seem like a treat.

And B just closed the deal on the sale of his old moped. Amazingly, it had 10,000 miles on it. And these used mopeds go for more than we ever expect. It's the thing about living on an island, I guess.




Photos: Yes, we were excited and were out there taking pictures the night B brought it home.
1. There she is!
2. The close up. You can really see the blue there.
3. The artsy shot. (We also got a new camera last month and I don't know how to use it yet. I get some great shots.)

The importance of clear expectations

P.S. "Them" did come up with a deadline.

I'd like some of that 'Canadian Super Hero Pie'

NYTimes movie critic A. O. Scott said, "If 'Waitress' were more strenuously uplifting, it might be labeled a feel-good movie, but it isn’t that. It’s just a movie that leaves you feeling good."

Waitress (2007) is centered on Jenna (Keri Russell), a very unhappily married woman who works as a waitress at Joe's Pie Diner, making creative and delightful pies with quirky names. A theme throughout the movie is that she invents pie recipes with names that reflect things happening in her life, like "I Hate My Husband Pie" and "I Don't Want Earl's Baby Pie." Another running theme is her composition of letters to her unborn baby that reflect the anxiety and ambivalence about her pregnancy and her life.

It seems that Jenna only can really connect people who are moved by her pies. True appreciation of her pies = true appreciation of Jenna. Both Dr. Pomatter (with whom she has an affair) and Old Joe (in whom she finds an unlikely ally) have an almost spiritual connection to her baked goods. Since so much of Jenna's own emotions are tied into these creations--in fact, it is the only thing that brings her pleasure and it serves as an escape--they serve as a bridge from one person to the other. Seeing that something she loves is also loved by someone else makes her feel valued. And I think that really goes pretty far in describing what does connect people--shared joys, shared interests, an admiration for the work and creations of another.

As is often true, there are some things I take issue with in Waitress, but I'm not in the mood to go into them here. Because I want to convey that we both just really enjoyed this movie. It is a sad, funny, sweet, movie that really, really makes me want to have pie.

(There is one bizarre point I simply can't ignore, however. What the hell is going on with those atomic pies we see at the end of the movie!? How could that possibly happen? I was perfectly willing to roll with any other unlikely point in this movie, but I simply cannot accept that this same woman who made all these beautiful and brilliant pies we see up until that point would ever turn out concoctions that look like something from Marge Simpson's kitchen!)

Waitress movie site
Adrienne Shelley Foundation


Tangentially related, but no less interesting (to me):
Nathan Fillion, the Canadian which this blog title refers and the actor who plays Dr. Pomatter in Waitress, is also famous in geeky circles for playing Dr. Hammer, Dr. Horrible's nemesis on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Neil Patrick Harris stars as Dr. Horrible.

And someone who has regular TV can tell me if this new show with Fillion is any good: Castle, premieres March 9, ABC. It's the new "Moonlighting," or so ABC would have us believe. (They may, indeed have something there. Like Bruce Willis, Fillion has also played an action hero. See Dr. Hammer reference immediately above.)

No title would do this video justice

Not a singer I'd heard of before, but the video is absolutely charming. "Her morning elegance" by Oren Lavie. Now I guess I need to check him out. (I suppose this is how these things are supposed to work, eh?) It somehow makes me want to go out on an adventure and curl up under the covers, all at the same time.



(via The Daily Dish.)

My bird has got a new buddy

Last January, I got this darling little painting of a Mejiro, or Japanese White-eye, done by local artist, Gary Kato.

And it hung all by itself...alone...for months.

But now it has a friend! (Thanks, B!)



This painting is another little green bird, the 'amakihi (Hemignathus virens chloris). It's considerably less common than the Japanese White-eye, but they say 'amakihi are regularly sighted in Oahu forests and even in Manoa. They are one of the few endemic birds that is still relatively common.

We, alas, have not yet seen one. But I'm keeping an eye out for it. I'll let you know.

Catching up

We've been behind on everything lately. For instance, we still haven't sent out what was supposed to be our New Year's greeting (since clearly we've missed Christmas).

And with not having TV (we have the appliance but no cable or signal) we even were behind on the events of the week.

Last night we finally watched the inauguration and speech (B had heard it on the radio, earlier, actually).

I usually avoid overt references to politics on this blog, but dang, I'm awfully excited about all this.

I know not everyone may share the optimism B and I do when we think about the new administration. No one knows what will happen -- no one on in any camp. And while the President is a strong figure in what happens, he's not (supposed to be) an all-powerful entity and he is just one of many important players. It's one of the thrills of a democracy. And even though I like how things are going, it all just seems to be happening awfully fast and doesn't seem quite real.

I am not going to gush that everything is now going to be great. In fact, the chances of that happening are slim and would have been slim no matter who came into office. But we will be watching it all with great interest.

And regarding our own selfish interests: it doesn't hurt to have a President in office who is fully aware of us in Hawaii. Out here. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean. All by ourselves.... And have I mentioned that my employer gets 1/2 it's funding from the U.S. gov?

Anyway, all I really want to say is Happy New Year. Best wishes to everyone.

"Crowberry Tales" has migrated to Ireland

For you "Crowberry Tales" fans (the blog with all the great bird and scenery photos from Alaska), Bob and Jen have now migrated from one cold place to another. And they've migrated to a new blog as well.

They will be in Ireland for the next few months and the wonderful photos have started up again on their new blog, "Sceil Lus na Feannaig." There are birds and scenery and all kinds of good stuff.



Bob and Jen have also posted updates on the original CT blog about their respective activities in Alaska for the past few months since they left False Pass. (And yes, Bob's post has bird pics. But Jen's is not to be missed either--she's got musk ox!)

Bob Keller, the photographer, is Benito's cousin's son. So that would make him....what? Second cousin? Anyway, we're happy to claim him, and I hope you continue to enjoy his photos.

Bacchus, Sanctus, and Ferragamo(?)

I always remember hearing . . . No, not hearing, knowing that Silvia Pinal was a very famous Mexican actor and was also very cute.

I don't quite remember, however, seeing her as young as she is in Viridiana (1961). Directed by Luis Buñuel, Pinal plays the novice Viridiana who is about to take her vows and become a cloistered nun. Her uncle (Fernando Rey) and financial supporter requests that she visit him before taking the habit. Viridiana, pushed by her Mother Superior, reluctantly agrees to go.

She spends a few days at his home, during which the sexual and religious tension between them is furthered by the camera's almost obsessive focus on feet, shoes, and religious icons.

Oh, did I mention that this is avant-garde cinema, by the way?

But don't get weirded out. This is no Un chien andalou eyeball-slashing, ant-crawling cinema. Buñuel manages to compose Viridiana's sanctity and sensuality and her uncle's desire for her (she resembles his late wife) in provocative ways without the obscurity typical of other avant-garde pieces.

At the same time, the simplicity of the framing and the dialogue belie the depth of the religious themes and criticism. Buñuel managed to get this past Franco era Spanish censors while he was making it, but after its debut at Cannes (where it won the Palme d'Or) it was banned all the way to the seventies.

The extras on the Criterion Collection Series DVD we got from Netflix are definitely worth watching. The interview with Silvia Pinal is quite informative about the history of the film (Is it a Spanish or a Mexican film?), a long special in French helps to understand Buñuel as a person (Did he or did he not punch Salvador Dali?), and a modern, if a bit nerdy, critic who manages to miss-pronounce Viridiana several different ways also helps to fill in some of the gaps (Did Buñuel have a fetish for shoes?).

Good film. Put it in your queue. Watch it. (If you dare....mwah ah ah ah..)

Movie review: Iron Giant

I somehow missed hearing anything about Iron Giant, an animated film directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), when it first came out in 1999. (Oh wait, I was in grad school in '99, so that explains how I missed it.) But in the years since, I had heard references to it in Bird interviews and also from film critics (as in, "well, this is no Iron Giant, but it's a reasonably entertaining animated film"). So into the queue it went.

The basic story is that a 100-foot, metal-eating robot lands on earth from outer space (specific origin unknown) that lands off the coast of Maine during a storm and is found and befriended by a nine-year-old boy.It's unclear what the robot's purpose for being here is -- and the robot himself doesn't seem to know, his apparent amnesia perhaps a result of the dent on his head. Forgive me for not telling you more, but I don't want to introduce any plot spoilers here because I definitely think that this is worth discovering for yourself. It's an interesting observation of a period of American history (post-Sputnik paranoia), but it's also a funny, sweet story with a pretty typical Disney-esque message ("you are what you want to be") delivered with charm and nuance.

The movie is loosely based on a book, The Iron Man, by British writer Ted Hughes (1930-1998). Hughes is listed as a consultant on the film, but he did pass away before it was finished.

If you want a complete review, you might check out the New York Times review, "The Attack of the Human Paranoids."

Is (screen) real estate that tight?

The addition of a one-letter word (gets a shot) would make this so much less disturbing when you read the first line of this headline from MSNBC.com this afternoon.

Politics aside, this was unpleasant news.

I rarely critique headlines, it being outside my area of expertise, but it seems like one character more might have been worth the space.

The importance of clarity in written communication...

eagle eye

Someone at work suggested we ask another coworker to use her 'eagle eye' and look for errors in a flier. This brought to my mind the image of someone looking down from really high up, spotting things from very far away.

Figuring that it was quite likely that I, not for the first time, was going a little too literal with an idiom, I looked it up:

eagle eye
Unusually keen sight; also, keen intellectual vision. For example, Antiques dealers have an eagle eye for valuable objects, or A good manager has an eagle eye for employee errors. [Late 1500s]
Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Houghton Mifflin Company. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eagle eye (accessed: September 18, 2008).

Of course, it's too late for me now. I just keep picturing my coworker floating in the air while she proofreads something on the ground...

* Photo by M Kuhn. Used under Creative Commons license.

Oh that's what Wii is...

My 'Mii' (my Wii avatar), waiting to bowl.


Sister's Mii hula hooping. (And that's my Mii on the left holding a hoop.)

At Sister and Tomster's house last week, I was introduced to the Wii (and Wii Fit). I could, I believe, have played this thing all day, every day. (Although a serious butt strain did eventually curtail my bowling.) I rocked the ski jump, didn't do too badly at golf, laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants trying to do the slalom, hit one out of every fifty serves in tennis, and generally found this all highly entertaining. And so, I must add, did my mom. I've never seen her so excited about a toy. That, alone, may have been worth the price of my plane ticket.

Bonsai and andagi

This past weekend B and I went to the Okinawan Festival at Kapiolani Park. We'd gone last year and watched some of the performances and shared some Okinawan soba. In the blazing heat of a late August midday. We couldn't believe how many people were there -- and truly of all ages.

This year, we poked around more and did a little shopping and checked out some of the cultural/historical stuff. I can see why they say that Okinawa is much like Hawaii -- very much a product of many influences (including Portuguese).

Half of the culture tent was dedicated to a bonsai show by the Hawaii Bonsai Association. Outside, there was a demo -- it was really fascinating. (Incidentally, the fellow doing the demo and answering questions is one of the regulars B sees when he goes boogie boarding in the morning.) It was interesting to see the special tools and wires they use (they mostly have to come from Japan, but we got a tip that you can now get cheaper wire from Vietnam). I was surprised at how very un-delicate some of the work was. Our demonstrator was really twisting and torquing his little tree, binding it with heavy, malleable wire that requires some real wrestling. (Hence the helper holding the pot.) His plan is to make the tree look like it grows where there is snow in the winter, so he is training the branches to all turn down. He has been working on this tree -- the one on the photo's right -- since 2002.

We would have stayed with the bonsai demo longer, but all that learning was making us hungry. It was, again, a blazing hot day (it's starting to look like this is typical for this time of year), but we managed to rise to the occasion and eat andagi (in the photo), which is basically the Okinawan doughnut. It's hard to go wrong with fried dough and andagi is no exception! Then we picked up some plates of food (and took it to join some friends in Manoa for a potluck lunch). We got champuru, which I'd never had (although I'd heard the word because a local Twitterer's handle is @champuru.)

Honolulu Advertiser photos from the festival here.

More of our (very amateurish) bonsai photos after the jump. These aren't great quality photos -- I think B got one just as good using his phone! -- but they do show a variety of plantings.


All of these plants are done by members of the Hawaii Bonsai Association.

Not drinking coffee can be bad for you...

I was viewing a video of Kermit and Harry the Hipster talking about 'visual thinking' (part of a post on Presentation Zen). On the 'you might also enjoy' line that pops up after you view a video, there was something called 'Wilkins Coffee.' These are ads done by Jim Henson in the 1950s for Wilkins Coffee. The characters are 'Wilkins' and 'Wontkins.' I bet you can guess which is which.

I had to share these. They're hilarious and disturbing all at once.

Not to mention brilliantly short and to the point.

Visiting the Garden Island

We were recently "off island," as they say. We spent a lovely week on Kauai with Tips & Burp. We ate at a couple of great restaurants -- Lighthouse Bistro and Bar Acuda (I didn't get that until I said it out loud...and saw the fish on their sign...). And we went on a lovely boat ride around the Na Pali Coast (viewing many famous movie backdrops including the entrance to Jurassic Park) on Holo Holo Charters on their teeny, tiny sailing catamaran.

This may be my favorite picture of the trip. (Ok, my second favorite. See below the jump.) This is at the taro fields overlook near Princeville, Kauai.
We're looking forward to seeing T and B's photos as well. (Hey guys, I am so going to burn ours and mail them. Really, really soon.)



And this is my favorite photo from our trip.
Doesn't B look...I don't know...salty?

Separated at birth?

...or secret love child?



It might just be us, but we can't shake this feeling that there must be some genetic link between Frank Schleck and Michael Palin...

The fuzz ball

This is Coco.
She has a pool.

We've been house and dog sitting for the last week or so. Of course, it's been raining almost every day since we've been here, so we haven't gotten much use out of the pool.

We have, however, enjoyed the granite and stainless steel counter tops and the Wolf stove.

Cutest. Robot. Ever.

We finally made it to see Wall-E (2008). I'd heard reviews raving about it, but frankly this was even more enjoyable than I had anticipated.

Wall-E is a sweet and totally unexpected love story between Wall-E, a Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class who is the last robot functioning on Earth, and EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Examiner), a probe sent to see if the Earth is recovering from its complete and total environmental collapse. (The movie is set a few hundred years after humans have had to abandon Earth to live on a big star cruiser.)

Despite the quietly persistent environmental doomsday message, this isn't a completely dystopian take on the future. Rather, it is chock full of love, hope, and dreams. Sure, some of these dreams are totally unrealistic -- Wall-E's notion of romantic love comes from a Hello, Dolly video tape and the starship captain's idea of Earth that he has gleaned from the ship's computer includes the notion that you can grow such things as pizza plants -- but they are heart-warming, nonetheless. There is an undercurrent and backstory that is horrifying, yet in the foreground there is so much fun and optimism, its quite digestable without being diluted.

Pixar fans, we are, and Wall-E did not disappoint. And I say without reservation that this is a notch up from Ratatouille.

While of course there are all kinds of great gadgets in this, I was particularly charmed by little M-O (Microbe Obliterator), who rolls around following foreign contaminant Wall-E, cleaning his tracks up with his "mono-rotational scrubbing roller." I've got to find me one of those...

And then the teeny, tiny camels went across the desert...

Last week we watched the Academy award winning epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). And yes, it took us a few days. This bugger is like, 3 1/2 hours long!

We thought we'd try a different format for our review this time, and we sent each other questions about the movie. We'll give you our Q&A here (with minimal rebuttals).

LK's questions to B:

LK: Did you know anything about this movie or the historical events referred to before you watched it? How did that affect your viewing experience?
B: I did not have the foggiest idea about anything.
LK: Me either.

LK: Did you used to think your tv was plenty large?
B: Yup. Boy, those epic desert scenes make the camels look puny.

LK: What did you enjoy the most? What was the most moving?
B: The movie as a whole was good, but I don't think I have any particular scene that was most enjoyable or moving. More like a flat feeling throughout.

LK: What were the Oscar-earning qualities of the movie, at least from your first impression?
B: It won an Oscar? [apparently it did].

LK: There were no individual female characters in the movie.Did it seem like an omission?
B: Nope. This is a movie about a guy in a war lead by other men, almost all takes place in the desert in a culture that shelters women from the eyes of other males (with whatever implications you might want to read into it with your Western XXI century sensitivities) so women are sheltered thus.
LK: In fact, women appear three times: the Harith women -- no faces -- watching a dinner behind a curtain, and also seeing their men off to war (with uluations), and some women in a ransacked village (dead), but there are dead men too. In context, significant female characters would have been way too Hollywood. Plus, there's much discussion that women weren't terribly important in Lawrence's life... (See Hidalgo)

LK: What did this make you want to know more about?
B: What was really going on in WWI in Arabia. How instrumental was he really in the war? As an aside, it is a great perspective on how Europe and the U.S. have had such political and economic interest in controlling the region to this day and how disgusting it is that the politics of the hegemonic countries have been unable to leave other cultures alone (and made me want to re-read E. Said's Orientalism).

LK: If your wife hadn't cheated and looked at IMDB, do you think you would have ever placed Alec Guinness?
B: Nope.

LK: This disk had no extras, but if there were any extras, what would you want to watch?
B: Was it shot on location? How hot was it really? Things of that nature.

LK: And most important: Sharif or O'Toole?
B: Sharif, for sure. O'Toole is just a bit bland and over-dramatic about his own personal importance in the world (which might reflect the real Lawrence, hmm...)

B's questions to LK:

B: Who was your favorite character in the film?
LK: Sharif Ali. He seemed the most...rational. (And he was the biggest babe.)

B: Is there a particular scene that you found particularly appealing (or unnecessary)?
LK: In general -- any scene with camels running across desert landscapes was really, really cool. Maybe if I saw it more than once, I would notice things that seemed unnecessary, but despite the fact that it was 3 1/2 hours long, nothing struck me as unnecessary (of course I hated the attack on the Turk troops and I covered my eyes, but the point seems to be the ugliness of war, etc., so I get that.)

B: After watching this film, would you like to know about the real T. E. Lawrence?
LK: Hell, yes. And more than just the Wikipedia entry. There is a 2008 book out on him, but I haven't found a review of it. You can get most of his own writings online, but I think I'd prefer more of a biography and historical context. I don't know a lot about the Arab Revolt. I think it would be really, really interesting and I'm sure it has a lot to do with contemporary issues in the region.

B: What did you think of the music? Will you buy the sound track?
LK: Maybe I already have...
B: What!?
LK: Kidding. But yes, I was into it. It was so interesting that on the DVD there is this explanation at the beginning that you aren't supposed to be seeing anything while the overture plays. It's a blank screen so that you are just listening to the music. It gives it a much higher level of importance as a result -- and when the same themes occur later in the movie, they have more power.

B: What prompted you to see this film in the first place anyway?
LK: Because it's famous. And epic. (I thought you put it in the queue.)
B: No. No. YOU put it in the queue.
LK: I'm pretty sure it was you...